I've read several post about mimicking GT3b2 with 1.1, but i'm not so understand it(i'm stupid ),I assume that :-q 6 --advanced-encode-option impulse_noisetune=-10 --advanced-encode-option impulse_trigger_profile=5.2is same as GT3b2 q6?

Please correct me if i'm wrong.Thanks!

Yes, it is a good approximation of it, though not exactly the same. Try comparing this setting with GT3b1 on some files. I haven't tried this setting myself but only derived it by looking at the psychoacoustic values of both.

@QuantumKnot:Thanks for the reply, but why try comparing the setting with GT3b1, not the GT3b2?

Mainly because GT3b1 is essentially the same as GT3b2, except that the former was based on Vorbis 1.0 while the latter was based on Vorbis 1.0.1. But the important tunings are the same. So you can compare with either of them.

I've been off this site for about a year.I've already read many threads and after reading this sticky, I'm really confused.

QuantumKnot is recommending "Xiph.Org's Vorbis 1.1" at all quality levels.His post was edited last time Nov 23 2004.

Many people on this board like the aoTuV-builds.I'm interesting in -q5 to -q7 ... which way should I go?

Best regards,Tobias

Welcome to Hydrogenaudio Tobias.

The reason why Vorbis 1.1 is recommended over any of the aoTuV builds is that, for all intents and purposes, it is aoTuV beta2 with a few extra bugfixes. Very few reliable tests have been conducted so far between aoTuV beta 3 and beta 2/Vorbis 1.1; thus Vorbis 1.1 is still the recommended version, but if even a few reliable tests come back in favor of aoTuV beta3 I think that QuantumKnot will probably change it.

Vorbis 1.1 is based on aoTuV beta 2. The recent aoTuV beta 3 is currently experimental and there haven't been any substantial listening tests done to show that it is better than Vorbis 1.1 in most genres (yet).

For the q range you are interested in, I suspect there isn't much difference. But you should do your own listening test with the music you listen to the most to verify.

Thats what I'm using with a foobar2000 encoder. I'm noticing something though. Using -q 5 which Im told is the min for transparency with this encoder, the bitrates seem to be lower than I get with 3.90.3 LAME's APS. I also did MPC for fun and found those to tend to be somewhere between OGG and MP3 at its stand setting.

Anyways, Ive tried to ABX a few tracks and I seem to not be able to tell that q5 sounds bad at all compared to the original. I used alot of tracks off FF123's problem sample FLACs and a few random wav's I had on my pc (mostly pop and urban style music). Its extremely hard for me to even hear any differences.

Im very excited about the lower bitrates but good quality still. But I don't wanna get my hopes up really fast just yet.

Anyways, Ive tried to ABX a few tracks and I seem to not be able to tell that q5 sounds bad at all compared to the original. I used alot of tracks off FF123's problem sample FLACs and a few random wav's I had on my pc (mostly pop and urban style music). Its extremely hard for me to even hear any differences.

Transparency is subjective and is different to different people. I find it hard to hear artifacts at q 4 most of the time while some people can hear the the faintest of artifacts at q 7 or more. So it is dependent on your equipment as well as your hearing.

This has been the bone of contention for a while....how to compare VBR codecs. The usual practice has been to compare codecs which have similar average bitrates on most genres of music. So what that means is gathering lots and lots of music of different genres, and twiddling the VBR settings of both codecs until they achieve the same average bitrate (adding up all the bitrates and taking an average) on this material.

QUOTE

2) could one say q5 (ogg) = lame-aps (mp3) in terms of quality?

Only a listening test can answer that, and it will be dependent on different people. Have a search around the forums to see if someone has done a test comparing q 5 ogg vorbis with lame aps.

QUOTE

3) since ogg doesn't have alot of the same limitations mp3 has. I assume its encoding even the high freq content fine?

Theoretically, ogg vorbis was designed to overcome the limitations of mp3. But whether it has been tuned optimally is the important question. IMO, ogg vorbis has a lot of potential and the current encoder is not as well tuned as say, LAME.

QUOTE

4) any GUI (like encospot) apps for OGG?

You could try OggDropXPd. There are quite a few.

btw. Ogg is a file container that can contain video and audio. The actual audio codec is called Vorbis.

Great topic! Answered almost all my questions in one swoop. Anyways, EAC+OGG... I notice the maximum bitrate is 320 KBp/s... will it encode higher? What do I do? Also, will EAC+OGG encode a DTS SACD? Lastly, is EAC still better than CDex, or has CDex outpaced it? I've been outta the loop a while

I think EAC is still the best ripper for detecting errors, though I find CDex's paranoia ripper to be quite good at 'fixing' scratched CDs. But if you have a CD drive that caches data, then CDex won't be able to detect the errors, so best go with EAC. Luckily, my DVD drive doesn't cache data (according to EAC)

It seems new Qk test build is recommended encoder because it based on Vorbis 1.1 and include only the new block switching algorithm.

QUOTE

so it can't do any worse than vanilla Vorbis 1.1, I hopeQuantumKnot

It is much too early to be recommending that. More testing is required to determine any special cases. While it can't do any worse than 1.1 in terms of quality, it can explode and give very high bitrates on some types of music though. I found one particular sample today so I went and fixed it, only to break it for another sample. So yeah, still early days. Plus we got some new aoTuV releases too

I have an amd64 processor and i was curious to find out if i was still supposed to use the p3/amd version or if i was supposed to use the p4 version. i've noticed that with other projects with different version that sse2 was the only difference between the two. is this true in this case?

I have an amd64 processor and i was curious to find out if i was still supposed to use the p3/amd version or if i was supposed to use the p4 version. i've noticed that with other projects with different version that sse2 was the only difference between the two. is this true in this case?

The best way to find out is to actually run the P4 version and see if it works. If it was specifically compiled for P4, you'll get an error message saying this is incompatible. If it works, then that means there aren't any P4-specific instructions used. But yeah, amd64 supports SSE2.